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  He paused and held eye contact with Jade.

  “The same light that never fades in your own. I see it so seldom in her. We need to do everything we can to kindle it.” He turned and they continued up the steps. “And besides, she lives in a palace. She has the whole of the land at her beck and call. A king reserves the right to spoil his daughter.”

  Jade turned to the Chancellor. “I am sorry. You had something you wished to tell us?”

  “Yes. While I am certain there is no cause for alarm, during your journey the palace security was made aware of motion by a certain unsavory group. It has encouraged us to take special precautions.”

  They came to their room. A pair of armed guards stood at either side of the door.

  “Armed guards within the living quarters?” the king said. “These are your special precautions?”

  “What concerns, precisely, do you have?” Jade asked.

  “It is a matter for the palace guards to concern themselves with, Your Majesties.”

  “On matters of my own safety, and those of my family, I am most certainly fully concerned. Speak,” Jade said, an authoritative tone coloring her voice for the first time since she’d returned.

  “It is the Order of the Red Shadow, your majesty,” the Chancellor said.

  “Assassins…” the king said. “Here in Verril?”

  The chancellor held out his hands. “We have no reason to believe they have come even as far as the city, let alone the palace. But as you know we have ears everywhere in the kingdom, and there are those who have suggested the recent trip to Kenvard motivated certain figures within the Order to take action.”

  “I tell you. Ignorance clings to this land like a stain. It has reigned over us for an era. Why are there so many unwilling to leave it behind?”

  “Never mind that. If you have reason to believe that guards at our chamber door are a sound precaution, why were there none at Myn’s door?” the king snapped.

  The king and queen, though as near to a perfect couple as had ever graced this palace, were quite different when it came to leadership. Jade ruled with an uncharacteristic familiarity with her subjects and a lightness of touch. Terrilius was raised to be a ruler, and fell quite comfortably into the role of demanding answers. His statement echoed through the hall with an authority that would have compelled a statue to answer.

  “We did not want to concern the princess. The guards were in place during your absence and are in place now.”

  The king leaned forward. “Listen to me, Chancellor. We do not keep things from the princess. We certainly do not keep things from her regarding her safety.”

  “Understood, Your Majesty. She shall be informed in the morning, unless you would prefer to do so yourself,” the Chancellor said.

  “I intend to. Until then, leave us.”

  Jade and Terrilius slipped into their bedroom and shut the door. Despite the cold, a roaring and well-maintained fire kept the room toasty warm. Lamps had been lit, with all likelihood just moments before their arrival. The workings of the palace conspired, as if by magic, to ensure that all was precisely as they required.

  “The Order of the Red Shadow…” Terrilius said, taking a seat to prepare for bed. “I thought we’d snuffed them out.”

  “It is just a name,” Jade said. “You can defeat a person, but a name will just rise again and again. It will be taken up by any who wish to be feared.”

  “Assassins do not act of their own accord,” he said. “If there truly is action against us, someone has ordered this. I do not know what is more troubling a thought, that it might be someone from outside our borders, or that it might be someone from within.”

  “There is no shortage of people, inside the kingdom and out, who would dearly love to see this dynasty come to a premature end. Those who fear change. Those who thirst for change on their own terms instead of ours. Those who simply seek power.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “My grandfather used to say if fools try to stop you, you know you are headed in the right direction.”

  They finished their nighttime routines and made ready to retire. The king and queen slid beneath the luxurious covers on their bed and gave each other a kiss goodnight. As Jade leaned aside to douse the flame on the lamp beside the bed, the faintest glint of something on the king’s pillow caught her eye.

  “Wait!” she said sharply.

  She sat up and grabbed the pillow, inspecting it close. Peeking out of the delicate weave was a tiny point. She snatched a kerchief from the table beside the bed and pinched the point to slide free a needle. Its tip glistened with some manner of liquid.

  Her eyes met his.

  “Myn,” they uttered.

  “Guards!” he shouted, leaping from bed and dashing to the door in his nightclothes.

  His men flung the door open.

  “To the princess’s room, immediately! There has been an attempt on my life and there very well may have been one upon Myn.”

  The guards raced forward, bellowing orders ahead. Jade and Terrilius dashed with them. Though the men moved out of duty, the king and queen were driven by the soul-deep fear for the safety of their child.

  Myn’s room was a single flight of stairs away. The nobles and their servants whisked down it in the blink of an eye. They witnessed the door to her room kicked open and rushed after the guards as they entered. The princess was startled, and like her parents had just finished getting ready for bed. Like any young woman dressed in her nightclothes faced with sudden and unexpected intrusion, she reached for something to cover herself.

  But for Myn, luck was a hunter. And this was a chance for it to strike. The princess could have reached for anything. A blanket. Her robe. The curtains around the bed or the tapestries on the wall.

  She reached for her pillow.

  Of all who saw her reach for the silken bit of bedding, only the king and queen knew the danger it held. They shouted for her to stop, and rushed forward. What happened next was not the act of a wise and responsible ruler. It was the act of a father. Terrilius reached her an instant before her hand would have touched the pillow. He dove across the bed and snatched the pillow away.

  “What is going on?” Myn cried, huddling down behind the edge of her bed, terror in her eyes.

  “Lock down the palace. I want anyone involved in the preparation of the royal chambers gathered up and held for questioning. Go, all of you, now!” Jade commanded.

  The guards obeyed. They rushed from the room, leaving only the royal family behind.

  “Are you hurt, Myn?” Jade asked holding her daughter close and turning her hands over to check them for pinpricks.

  “I was just heading for bed. What has happened?” Myn asked.

  Jade turned to the king. He pulled his hand away from the pillow. A thin needle hung from his skin.

  “By the gods… To the infirmary!” Jade shouted.

  #

  Two long hours of anxious waiting passed. Medicine, even in the palace, was anything but a certain science these days. There were thousands of poisons that an assassin might use. That King Terrilius had not yet succumbed eliminated half of them. That he showed no symptoms eliminated many more. What finally settled the mystery was the mark the needle left on his skin where he had been pricked. A single, distinct black point.

  “Leave us,” the king said to the royal healers. “And tell no one of what has been found.”

  His subjects nodded and took their leave. For a moment Terrilius, Jade, and Myn sat in silence surrounded by the potent scent of the dried herbs and complex extracts in the royal infirmary.

  “Cutleaf poisoning,” Jade breathed, finally.

  “It could be worse,” the king said, gazing at the injury.

  “How could it be worse?” Myn fretted, tears in her eyes. “Cutleaf is fatal!”

  “It couldn’t have been more than a drop of the stuff,” the king said. “It acts slowly. I will have weeks. There is time,” he said
with unnerving calm for a man describing his own looming demise. “Plans can be made.”

  “We won’t spend those weeks making a plan. We’ll spend those weeks making a cure,” Jade said with conviction.

  “There is a cure?” Myn said hopefully.

  “Jade, we don’t know that such a thing exists,” the king cautioned.

  “I have read the cure with my own two eyes. If I wasn’t such a fool I could quote it to you right now, but that wasn’t the cure I was searching for when I read it, so I just passed it by.”

  “Well what is it? How do we get it? We must send someone,” Myn said.

  “It is back in the tower. Not the cure, but the book that describes it. The tower in Ravenwood,” Jade said.

  “We will dispatch someone,” the king said.

  “Ravenwood is far too vast and far too confounding to simply dispatch someone. And even if we could be certain someone would find the tower, there is still the matter of finding the book. There isn’t time to send just anyone.”

  “You are suggesting that I allow you to go,” the king said.

  “I am informing you of my intention to go,” Jade crossed her arms. “And to suggest that I would require your permission makes me wonder just who you think you’ve been married to for all these years.”

  “Jade, there are people trying to kill us. I need you here where you can be safe.”

  “We aren’t safe here, Father!” Myn said. “You were poisoned. I was nearly poisoned.”

  “And it could only have been done by a member of the staff, or someone able to slip past the guards,” Jade said.

  “What am I supposed to do, Jade? It is my duty to the kingdom to ensure that she will remain under strong leadership, and it is my duty as a husband and a father to keep you both safe.”

  “There is another who shares that duty,” Jade said simply.

  Terrilius glared at her.

  “What are you proposing?” he rumbled.

  “Terry, there is a plot to strike us down. We would be fools to suppose it is over. If they are skilled—and that they’ve succeeded to this degree suggests they are profoundly skilled—then you shall no longer be a target for them. By now they’ll know that you are poisoned. That job is done. The only real threat is for Myn and I. If you want us to be safe, it won’t be enough to do as we always have, and as every royal always had. We need to do something they won’t have expected.”

  “What can we do?” Myn asked.

  Jade stared evenly at her husband. The king’s face shifted silently through a subtle spectrum of emotions. He was first angry, then indignant, and finally reluctantly accepting.

  “And if he is not willing? Or is not able?” Terrilius asked of the unspoken plan.

  “He made a promise to me. He will be there. I’ll make preparations. We’ll be out of the castle within an hour. And we’ll have the cure within the week.” She turned. “Come, Myn.”

  “You’re not taking Myn along with you,” he said. The tone was of disbelief rather than demand.

  “Until we know who to trust, we’ll be safer together.”

  The king leaned back and shut his eyes, contemplating what had been said.

  “It is difficult to believe that so absurd a plan might still be the best decision,” he said.

  “In lives like ours, nothing is done by half measures,” Jade said.

  He sighed and opened his arms. “Come, Myn. Give your father a hug.”

  She stepped forward and hugged him, burying her face on his shoulder.

  “Father…” she wept.

  “No, no. No tears. I need you to be strong now.” He turned her head to face him. “Stay with your mother. Keep her safe and do as she says. I’ll still be here when you return.”

  Myn backed away, nodding dutifully. Jade stepped in and hugged her husband.

  “Be strong, Terry. We’ll be back as soon as we can.” She took Myn’s hand. “Come. It will best if we do this before the sun rises.”

  #

  Scarcely an hour later, unbeknown to the palace staff, Jade and Myn were on horseback, riding along a little-used pathway through the mountains to the northwest. Neither mother nor daughter looked terribly royal at the moment. Each wore simple but sturdy coats and trousers. They were well-equipped for travel. Packs filled with provisions were strapped to their backs. Strangely enough, the horses were lightly equipped.

  “I don’t understand, Mother,” Myn fretted, holding tight to the reins. “If there are people after us, shouldn’t we bring the honor guard at least?”

  “Myn, do you remember the coin?” Jade asked.

  “The coin of the protector?”

  “That’s right. Today, you shall meet him.”

  The young woman gritted her teeth. “What good is he, if he couldn’t keep father safe?”

  “His obligation is not to your father. It isn’t even to me. His obligation is to you. And for him to properly protect you, we must be free of the castle. We must be hidden from all eyes but our own and those of the fiends who mean us harm.”

  The horses came the bank of an icy river that flowed through the mountainside. These were the Daggergale Mountains, so named because the wind was so harsh and frigid it felt like it was slicing you to the bone. In a land of ice and stone, these were some of the most treacherous slopes one could have the poor judgment of attempting to cross. They dismounted near the north end of the bank, which was quite possibly the only place for miles that the stream was accessible. Elsewhere, either side of the little river rose into a sheer cliff. It reached dozens of feet into the air before the slope became shallower. In the distance, barely visible in the cloud-filtered moonlight, the river became much wider, and much rougher.

  Jade paced to the doors of a boathouse at the north end of the bank and fought with its door. The structure looked to have been neglected for years, but a bit of yanking and shoving at the doors finally cracked the ice fouling their hinges and the doors to swing open.

  The queen fetched a lantern from her pack and sparked it to life.

  “Come, inside,” she urged quietly. “Make sure you have everything from the horses, give them a slap, and come inside. They’ll find their way home.”

  Myn, shivering more from her anxiety than the cold, nodded numbly and did as her mother said. When the horses had galloped away and left them stranded with miles of frozen mountain between them and the palace, she stepped into the boathouse. Jade knocked at the floor of a small rowboat that was at the dry end of a set of skids leading down into the water.

  “Good, good. The boat is in good repair,” Jade said.

  “We aren’t going to ride it, are we?”

  “I do not believe that there are people following us, Myn, but if there are, we need to be sure we begin this journey by going where they cannot follow. If we are lucky, they will believe we have died and we will be safe from them until we prove otherwise. At worst, we’ll at least lose them for a bit. Climb in and hold tight. This will be frightening.”

  Myn trusted her mother implicitly, but the look in her eye made it clear her trust was being sorely tested. She shakily climbed over the side of the boat. It rocked unsteadily as she took a seat, and again when Jade climbed in. Once both were inside, seated side by side with oars in hand, Jade took a moment to prepare.

  “Now listen carefully,” Jade said. “I know you can’t feel it, but I can. The protector is near. I can feel his eyes on us. But he may not act until he believes he must. It may feel that our lives are in danger. But they are not. Not while he watches us. But if something happens and we are separated, know that of the two of us, you are the one he cares for most. If it happens that you find him and I do not, tell him of our plan. Tell him we are going to go to the place where he… Tell him to take you to the place that was ours. Tell him why. Tell him everything.”

  “Are you sure we can trust him?”

  “There are three people in this world I trust beyond any
doubt. One is you. One is your father. And the third, we shall soon meet.” Jade gripped the oar. “Ready?”

  Myn nodded and mirrored her mother.

  “Then here we go.”

  They pulled hard at the oars and the boat slid down along the skid. It struck the ice and slid for a few feet, emerging out onto the frozen river. Their oars scraped and slid against the ice, inching them along until the thin ice nearer to the center gave way and they plunked down in to the rapid flow.

  “We’re not trying to steer,” Jade called over the crash and slosh of the water. “We are just trying to keep ourselves from the walls and from the ice. Use the oar to push the boat aside. The current will take us as far as we need to go.”

  Myn nodded again and pulled the oar from the water. The current was faster than it looked, and became faster with every passing moment. Rock-hard ice ground into the boat on either side in the places where the river narrowed. Rolling waves pitched them side to side. Myn’s heart raced.

  “No…” she uttered, her voice hollow. “Mother, this isn’t right. This isn’t safe. I shouldn’t… I’m a downside. I can’t do this.”

  The tone of her voice was harried. She was clearly losing control. Jade reached out and took her daughter’s hand.

  “Listen to me. We are safe. Safer now than we’ve ever been.”

  The boat crested a swell and crashed down, spritzing them with ice crystals. It was so cold the water was freezing before it even reached them.

  “I can’t… I shouldn’t have even ridden the horse. This isn’t right. I’m not safe,” Myn said shaking her head.

  The river widened ahead of them, and the slope of the nearby mountains opened out. They would be in little danger of crashing into the walls now. Here the very real threat was capsizing as the current became rougher. Jade pulled her oar into the boat and took her hand from it. It would be worthless to her now, and her arms had a more important task. She hugged her daughter tight and let her bury her terrified face into her coat.

  “We are in no danger,” Jade whispered, rocking the frightened teen. “We are in no danger.”